12. William Cowper
12. William Cowper
William Cowper-the best of English letter writers and the most distinguished Christian poet of his day- was born at Berkhampstead, Herts, on November 26, 1731. He lost his mother when only six years old but retained a vivid memory of her tenderness and piety, illustrated in his poem ``My Mother’s Picture’. Always delicate and timid, barbarously treated by a bully at boarding school, following a nervous fever he became mentally ill and was for a time in a home; he had a good measure of recovery and in 1767 removed with Mary, Mr. Unwin’s widow who had cared for him before and after her husband’s death, to Olney where he became an intimate friend of John Newton. Here he joined Newton in composing The Olney Hymns ``to perpetuate the remembrance of an intimate and endeared friendship, and the nineteen years with Newton here were the happiest and most lucid of his life.’ Notwithstanding critics John Newton’s influence was both good and needful for as The Quarterly Review has pointed out Cowper needed a companion of kindred sentiment. Cowper’s poem ``To Mary’ is full of pathos and his hymns, above all ``God moves in a mysterious way’ have been ``blessed to millions’. He passed to eternal rest on April 25, 1800. Many shadows crossed Cowper’s pathway but also bright beams of heaven’s sunlight. As to the shadows- Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His works in vain, God is His own interpreter And He will make it plain.